HOW TO USE THE RASPBERRY PI BOARD AS AN ETHERNET ADAPTER, WHICH WILL ALLOW TO REMOTE CONTROL THE AR8600MK2 RECEIVER THROUGH LAN.
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We at AOR love the Raspberry Pi and wanted to share the exitement at experimenting with it!
A couple of our engineers have used their spare time to develop this system. We know it is not perfect, but it's free, so don't be too hard on us ;-)
Difficulty level: Intermediate
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You need to know how to operate the AR8600MK2 receiver and have basic knowledge of RASPBIAN and the Raspberry Pi.
These instructions are voluntarily limited to remote controlling the AR8600MK2 receiver through the LAN network. Although it is in theory possible to remote control through Internet, it would require a more complicated set-up, especially regarding "port-forwarding" on your router, and is beyond the scope of this document.
HARWARE REQUIREMENTS:
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-AR8600MK2 receiver, with the serial communication speed set at 19200 bps.
-Raspberry Pi "B" version with the ethernet jack, as we need to connect to LAN.
-Powered USB-HUB for the Raspberry Pi, as you will need 4 or 5 USB sockets in total.
-(9 pin, male) Serial to USB converter cable. Connect the serial side to the receiver, and USB side to the Raspberry Pi.
-USB audio adapter (with MIC or LINE input). Connect to Raspberry Pi's USB port..
-Jack 3.5mm male-male audio cable. Connect one side to the receiver's "Phones" or "Ext.sp" socket, the other into the USB audio adapter's MIC/Line-in. The receiver's audio level should be set fairly low to avoid audio distortion on the client side. You can always adjust it later.
-Computer to run the client software. Operating system unimportant, as long as it runs JAVA.
SOFTWARE SETUP:
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First, make sure that Raspbian is up to date with:
sudo apt-get upgrade
and
sudo apt-get update.
1. Necessary files supplied by AOR:
aorlan.tar.gz ---> For the SERVER side: Needs to be installed on the Raspberry Pi, as per instructions below.
AR8600Edev.jar ---> FOR THE CLIENT computer: Java client software to control the AR8600MK2 receiver through LAN
2. Install software on the Raspberry Pi (=server)
Copy the file aorlan.tar.gz to a Raspberry Pi directory of your choice (/home/pi in our example)
Open the LXTerminal and type:
$ tar xf aorlan.tar.gz
This will decompress the file and copy a folder named "aorlan".
This folder will contain following files:
aorlan
arlan
chk_dev.sh
lanserv.conf
oss_inst.sh
3. Go to directory "aorlan" by typing:
$ cd aorlan/
4. Install the oss_inst.sh package by typing:
$ ./oss_inst.sh
5. Check the USB-serial converter and USB-audio converter connections to the Raspberry Pi, by typing:
$ ./chk_dev.sh
The correct response will be something like:
crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 0 Jan 1 1970 /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw---T+ 1 root audio 14, 19 Jan 1 1970 /dev/dsp1
If the message "No such file or directory" appears then there is a problem with these USB connections and that would be needed to be solved before going any futher.
6. Start the server software "aorlan" by typing:
$ ./aorlan
(Only this step #6 will be necessary to start the program every time after the Raspberry Pi has rebooted)
Backgroung shell possible as well:
$ ./aorlan &
7. Copy AR8600Edev.jar to the "client" computer. No install necessary.
8. Double-click AR8600Edev.jar to start the receiver control program.
The only parameter to set is the (internal) IP address of the Raspberry Pi on the same network, and click CONNECT. (To find out the IP address, open the LXTerminal and type "ifconfig". It should be something like 192.168.1.XX)
Username, password, TCP and UDP ports are already preset. If you wish to use different values, you need to edit first the file "lanserv.conf" on the Raspberry Pi with Leafpad.
Default values for "lanserv.conf" as follows:
tcp port: 48752
udp port: 48752
timeout: 15
Serial communication speed: 19200bps (it is very important that your AR8600MK2 receiver has the same speed selected in the CONFIG menu, or the communication will fail.)
Username: a
Password: b
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Client software (AR8600Edev.jar) details:
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Known limitations:
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AUDIO LEVEL has to be changed from within the operating system, not possible from inside the control software. This is a known hardware limitation of the AR8600MK2 receiver, as its CPU does not feature a command to control volume.
The SCOPE (spectrum display) is very slow, therefore disabled (unchecked) by default.
Audio quality selection:
To change the audio quality (default = low), you first need to check the MUTE box. Then un-mute to start streaming the sound again.
When you click "connect" for the first time, settings are saved in a file "conf8600.txt" created on the same directory than where AR8600Edev.jar is being executed. It is possible to edit this text file to preset different values if needed.
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*Have fun!!!*
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AOR Ltd. in Tokyo
www.aorja.com
mail@aorja.com
April 4, 2014
gRaspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundationh. http://raspberrypi.org.